[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 93 (Tuesday, June 4, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3178-S3179]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Presidential Powers

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise to address a matter that I 
believe should alarm every Member of this Senate, regardless of party, 
and that is the President's and the executive branch's increasing use 
of declared emergency powers to seize powers that are not lawfully 
theirs to take.
  Just in the last week, we have seen two examples of this. We saw an 
administration claim emergency authority to move forward with an arms 
sale to Saudi Arabia and others. Last week, we also saw the President 
claim emergency powers in order to threaten an escalating set of 
tariffs on the country of Mexico.
  Earlier this year, the President claimed emergency powers to divert 
funds away from important military and national security priorities to 
fund part of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. There was a headline, 
May 10, 2019, ``Pentagon Shifts $1.5 Billion to Border Wall From Afghan 
War Budget and Other Military Projects.''
  I, personally, oppose the outcomes the President is seeking in each 
of these emergency declarations. I oppose selling weapons to Saudi 
Arabia under the current circumstances. I oppose putting huge tariffs 
on Mexico that will harm American consumers and American businesses. I 
oppose diverting moneys from the Defense Department to spend on a 
wasteful, ineffective wall along the entire U.S. border.
  Those are my views with respect to these outcomes. I suggest that all 
of us, Republicans and Democrats alike, should focus not only on the 
outcomes of each of these emergency declarations but the means the 
President is using to achieve them because, in each case, the President 
is claiming emergency powers to justify these actions. If this Senate 
stands by and allows that to happen, we will be surrendering our 
coequal powers as a separate branch of government and, in the process, 
undermining the integrity of our democracy itself. We should not leave 
this to the courts. We should not say, well, we don't think the 
President should be able to declare these emergency powers, but we are 
not going to deal with it here in the Senate; we are going to leave 
that to the third branch of government. That will undermine our 
democracy and this institution. Whether you like the outcomes or 
dislike the outcomes, the claim of emergency power to achieve these 
goals establishes a terrible precedent for our democracy, and we cannot 
sit idly by and allow that claim to continue unchecked.
  I want to start by reviewing the Trump administration's invocation of 
so-called emergency powers to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia and others. 
The President's desire to please the Saudi regime and promote the Crown 
Prince's reckless conduct apparently knows no limits. It is a 
bottomless pit. We all recall President Trump vetoed a resolution that 
passed both Chambers of Congress with bipartisan support to end U.S. 
military support for the disastrous war in Yemen. When his own CIA 
Director concluded that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia was complicit 
in the murder of U.S. resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the 
President refused to hold the Crown Prince accountable. Instead, he ran 
to his defense saying that ``it could very well be that the Crown 
Prince had knowledge of this tragic event--maybe he did and maybe he 
didn't!''
  That was the President's attitude, go ahead and murder a resident of 
the United States, go ahead and murder a columnist for a major U.S. 
paper. It doesn't really matter.
  The administration went on to flout the law by refusing to provide a 
determination to Congress on whether the Saudi Crown Prince was 
responsible for the murder of Khashoggi. Despite the fact that Saudi 
leaders have openly talked about acquiring a nuclear weapon, the 
President is singularly determined to conclude a nuclear cooperation 
agreement with the Saudis, attempting to dodge oversight and 
accountability at every turn.
  That was just the prelude to what the President did last week when 
Congress was in its work period. The President invoked a so-called 
emergency authority to sell precision-guided munitions and other arms 
to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others. Why? It is pretty obvious. He 
knew that arms sale would be challenged by Congress, and it would be 
very likely that Congress would not approve that sale.
  What happened? Here are the facts. Under the law, the administration 
must submit a formal notification to Congress of a proposed arms sale, 
if it is large enough. After the sale is notified, Congress has a short 
window in which we can act to block the sale. We would do that by 
introducing and passing a joint resolution of disapproval through the 
House and the Senate. The President knew the Congress was not going to 
support that sale and that we would likely vote to block it. What did 
he do? Instead of trying persuasion, instead of going through the 
constitutional process, the legal process, he decided to fake an 
emergency because under the law, the President can bypass congressional 
review if he states that ``an emergency exists,'' which requires the 
sale to be made immediately ``in the national security interests of the 
United States.''
  By making that declaration, the President was able to commit an end-
run against Congress, and we should not allow it to happen because it 
is abuse of power and, I believe, an abuse of the law.
  That emergency authority has only been used a handful of times in the 
last few decades. In fact, the last President to invoke it was 
President George H. W. Bush following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. 
Let's be clear. There is no emergency here, and the President is 
invoking it under false pretenses simply to hand another favor to the 
Saudi Crown Prince.
  Where are these bombs and munitions going to end up? The war in Yemen 
and the Saudi-led coalition's war against the Houthis in Yemen has 
raged for 5 years now, costing the lives of more than 
100,000 civilians. Millions are on the brink of starvation. The United 
Nations has declared Yemen the world's largest humanitarian 
catastrophe. Where are we 5 years into this war? The Houthis are more 
entrenched and militarily sophisticated. Iranian influence in the 
region has expanded.

  In short, the Trump administration's strategy has been totally 
counterproductive. Instead of prioritizing a diplomatic solution of the 
conflict, the President is fueling the fire and perpetuating a 
humanitarian crisis.
  What was the claimed emergency here, the emergency the President 
invoked to try to bypass the Congress

[[Page S3179]]

and sell these weapons to Saudi Arabia? The administration cites in its 
documents, in its notice, Iranian malign activity in the region. The 
administration claims that the ``rapidly-evolving security situation in 
the region requires an accelerated delivery of certain capabilities to 
U.S. partners in the region.''
  We all know that Iran is a malign actor in the region. This is 
nothing new. It has kept the Assad regime in Syria alive. It supports 
the Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and a 
constellation of Shia militia groups in Iraq--all of which have 
contributed to instability in the region for a very long time.
  The administration has not explained why all of a sudden this ongoing 
malign activity justifies an emergency declaration to circumvent this 
body in the House of Representatives, nor has it shown how the delivery 
of these weapons is going to provide some kind of an immediate benefit 
to either the United States or our allies.
  What we really have is, this administration has, under the direction 
of National Security Advisor John Bolton, in a calculated effort, 
dramatically increased tensions with Iran to a point where we could 
easily have a miscalculation that leads to war.
  This administration has ripped up the nuclear agreement, choked off 
Iran's oil exports, and, against the advice of America's military 
leadership, designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard a terrorist 
organization while accelerating the movement of American ships and 
bombers into the Persian Gulf.
  Maybe most troubling is that even when given multiple opportunities, 
Secretary of State Pompeo, has refused to acknowledge that the 2001 
authorization to use military force, AUMF, would not justify the 
administration taking military action against Iran. The 
administration's failure to make that very clear shows the need and 
urgency for us to act in these areas. In fact, what we know from our 
intelligence communities, cited in public reports, there is zero 
evidence that Iran and al-Qaida have carried out any joint operations 
against the United States. In fact, to the contrary, ISIS, which we 
know is an al-Qaida descendant in Syria and Iraq, took credit for a 
2017 attack on Iran's Parliament building and tomb of the Islamic 
Republic's founder, the Ayatollah Khomeini, which according to Iran's 
state media killed at least 12 people.
  Anyone who knows anything about the history in this region knows that 
while Iran is a malign actor, they have been an enemy of al-Qaida and 
an enemy of ISIS--Iran, of course, being a majority Shia country and 
ISIS and al-Qaida being extreme elements of a Sunni ideology.
  As we sit here and watch the President invoking these emergency 
powers to undermine the separation of powers, we are not doing our job 
so we need to begin to take action. Yet what the President is learning 
from our inaction is the ability to continue down this road of claiming 
emergency powers to take further measures.
  As I said just last week, we also saw the President invoke emergency 
powers to put in place a mechanism to dramatically increase tariffs on 
Mexico over a period of time. That, of course, would be incredibly 
costly to American consumers, costly to American businesses, but it is 
also incredibly costly to our system of government and separation of 
powers, where article I clearly gives this Congress power in the area 
of setting trade policy. Yet where are we? We are AWOL, totally AWOL 
when it comes to standing up for the Constitution. We are allowing this 
President to, time after time, claim emergency powers to accomplish 
certain goals. Some may justify it by saying: OK. I agree with the 
outcome in that particular use of emergency powers.
  This pattern of conduct is going to set a very dangerous precedent. 
While some of my colleagues may like some of these outcomes today, you 
have another President in the White House who starts claiming emergency 
powers left and right, and all of a sudden, I can assure you, my 
colleagues will take a different view. This is the moment when people 
need to come together and stand up for the Constitution and do our jobs 
as a separate branch of government. We can't contract this all out to 
the courts to make these determinations. Of course, earlier in the 
year, the President claimed emergency powers to divert moneys from 
important national security efforts, including the effort in 
Afghanistan and to build the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
  Again, I suggest, don't be lured into going along with this process 
simply because you like the outcome. We can disagree about whether it 
is smart and cost-effective to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico 
border, but we should not disagree that it is an abuse of power to 
continue to manufacture or claim emergency authorities to override the 
will of Congress.
  This is an important moment, especially as we consider the fact that 
Secretary Pompeo has not clearly indicated that the 2001 AUMF does not 
give this administration or any administration the power to use 
military action against Iran.
  If we don't start standing up and doing our job, we will be 
undermining important constitutional principles that the Founders put 
in place to prevent an Executive from running wild over the legislative 
process. So I hope, as the Republicans and the Democrats see the 
President invoke these emergency powers of whether to sell arms to 
Saudi Arabia, to increase tariffs on Mexico, or to build a wall, we 
recognize that we are going down a very, very slippery slope and that 
we have a constitutional obligation to protect our democracy and the 
principles outlined in the Constitution.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cruz). The Senator from Texas.

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